This is my experience as well, and I'm wondering if this industry could learn something from another one: video games. In that industry, many specialized technical people work on a large project, but their goals and "infrastructure" (seem to be) aligned.

Are the issues we see in many software companies w.r.t. AI/ML/DS an effect of poor role definition/team hierarchy? It seems to me that a five-person team complete with an "engineer", scientist/researcher, a couple of devs for APIs and pretty pictures, and one other "utility" role would totally kill it and create amazing things. But, I've never worked in an environment where the ML people aren't completely segregated into their environment, so I don't know.